


The Protocol on Reunions

by WardenCommanderCousland



Series: Return to Duty Universe [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 01:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WardenCommanderCousland/pseuds/WardenCommanderCousland
Summary: "If I die today, I think I at least deserve to know her name."





	The Protocol on Reunions

“So, what’s her name?”

Garrus pulled his head away from the sniper rifle’s scope. The Reapers were still a few miles off from their base camp, but less than one from his position. Adrian Victus was standing over him with a bemused expression on his face. “Excuse me?”

Victus sat next to Garrus, his back against the barricade. “The human you’ve been mooning over since Earth was hit.”

“I’m not mooning—”

“Don’t argue,” Victus said, raising his hand. “You’ve been much quieter than usual, barely talking to anyone.”

Garrus bristled. “We’re in the middle of a war zone, General. This isn’t the time to have this conversation.”

“We’re about to be overrun with Reapers.” Victus inserted a new thermal clip into his side arm, then popped his head above the barricade. “If I die today, I think I at least deserve to know the name of the girl you decided was better for you than Avita.”

This again. Garrus shook his head and returned his gaze to the scope. He fired off a few shots, taking out the sprinting husks at the head of the pack. They’d be here in mere minutes. “I was never going to convince her to stay.” Another shot, another hit. “And you know well that Avita broke up with me years ago. I had nothing to do with her decision to go to Andromeda.”

“Just tell me, Vakarian.” Victus lobbed a grenade over the top of the barricade. A harvester flew overhead. “And get that thing the hell off my men.”

The shrieks of husks erupted around them, piercing through the moon’s previous eerie stillness. Garrus retracted the sniper rifle and swapped it for his assault rifle. There was no time to line up shots anymore. The Reapers were here.

Victus peeled off as he directed his troops to flank the horde, and Garrus quickly lost sight of them. He kept shooting, picking off as many of the synthetic monsters as he could, burning through his thermal clips faster than he would have liked. He cursed as he chambered the last one, hoping for some sign of help.

“Any Hierarchy members still alive, we need a line of succession.” A guard’s voice ripped through the comm, punctuating the shrieks. “Fedorian is down. Repeat, Primarch Fedorian is dead.”

Garrus shook his head. The comms tower was back online, but it was time to run. Hopefully he’d come across a body with spare clips between here and the base camp. The horde had overtaken him, tearing through turian soldiers left and right. Crap. They were going to lose this moon if something didn’t happen quickly.

The guard’s voice commed again. “Hierarchy, we need a line of succession. Alliance officers seeking Primarch. Repeat, Alliance officers seeking Primarch.”

What the hell was the Alliance doing here? Garrus slammed a husk out of his path with his elbow, continuing his run. He tapped into his envirosuit, granting him a speed boost, though it came at the reduction of his armor’s weight. A well-placed shot would kill him.

Oh well. Better not get shot then.

Garrus reached the barricade outlining the base camp. An Alliance shuttle was zipping nearby, avoiding fire from airborne Reapers and turian fighters alike. He didn’t recognize the call signs, couldn’t identify its parent ship.

The Alliance officers were standing outside General Corinthus’s shelter. Garrus paused for a second. Since when did the Alliance have asari in their ranks?

On a hunch, he tapped his visor, allowing it to zoom in so he could study the group closely.  Closest to him was a meaty Alliance officer, shifting back and forth uncomfortably. “Stand still, damn you,” Garrus said as he tried to focus on the other officer and the asari. As luck would have it, the asari looked around distractedly just as her familiar face cleared. A grin broke out across Garrus’s face. If Liara was here, that could only mean the remaining soldier, with a characteristic N7 stripe on her arm, had to be—

The soldier turned, a curtain of black hair framing the face he’d hoped to see. “Shepard,” he said, relieved. So, she’d made it off Earth, and the Alliance was letting her roam free. He hoped that meant her court-martial hadn’t been too harsh. He hadn’t seen her since the day Anderson took her into custody on the Citadel, and the Alliance had shut down any news related to the destruction of the Bahak system. All of his messages to her had bounced. And yet, it was all he could do to keep from constantly dwelling on the nights he spent tucked up in her cabin on the Normandy.

She was arguing with the general. “I need someone, I don’t care who, as long as we can get the turian resources we need.”

That’s my girl, Garrus thought fondly as he strolled up the ramp into the shelter. “I’m on it, Shepard. We’ll find you the primarch.”

Shepard nearly dropped her helmet. “Garrus!”

Corinthus stumbled then saluted. “Vakarian, sir, I didn’t see you arrive.”

Garrus tried to hide his smug satisfaction. Having a general salute him in front of one of the galaxy’s legends, a woman who’d been haunting his dreams in and out of her armor for months, well, it felt pretty damn good. “At ease, General.”

Shepard pushed past the flustered general. “You’re alive,” she said, holding her hand out to him. Garrus hesitated for a moment then shook it. He hoped she was just being professional in front of the military, that she hadn’t changed her mind about him in the months since they’d been together.

“I’m hard to kill, you should know that.”

She pulled back. “Good to see you again. I thought you’d be on Palaven.”

Garrus shook his head. “If we lose this moon, we lose Palaven. I’m the closest damn thing we have to an expert on Reaper forces so I’m…advising.”

Shepard introduced him to her meaty friend, James, and allowed Liara to get a moment in with Garrus as well. He chuckled when he saw the Alliance logo on Liara’s armor. How many strings did Shepard have to pull to get that approved?

“This is Palaven command.” Garrus’s comm was staticky and partially drowned out by the sound of screeching Reapers. “Adrian Victus is next Primarch. Confirm if alive.”

~

“Well, well, well,” Victus said as they disembarked the Kodiak. “It wasn’t just any human, it was the decorated Commander Shepard.”

Garrus straightened his posture, pretending he didn’t hear the new primarch. Shepard barely said a word to him on the shuttle ride up to the Normandy, instead briefing Victus on the summit they were heading to. He announced to no one in particular, “I think I’ll check on the guns. They’re probably due for calibration.”

“Don’t think we aren’t going to talk about this,” Victus said as Garrus entered the elevator.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Primarch.” The doors closed and the elevator pulled him up to the crew level. He needed time to think, to process.

The guns were right where he left them, virtually untouched by the Alliance retrofits. A familiar calm washed over him as he began sorting through the displays. He thought back over the last few hours. Shepard had been cool, professional. The closest thing to any of the warmth and tenderness he knew she was capable of was when she’d admitted she had no idea how to end the war. When he said he was coming along, she’d simply nodded.

A few hours later, the doors to the battery opened, revealing the subject of his musings. Shepard had changed into Alliance fatigues, which she looked much more comfortable in than those issued by Cerberus, and she had showered. He could smell the familiar faint citrus and soap aroma he’d learned to associate with her. “Didn’t waste any time getting to work, I see,” she said, a smile creeping across her face.

“After what I’ve been through lately, calibrating a giant gun is a vacation. Gives me something to focus on.” Something else to focus on, at least, Garrus thought. His visor flicked as he tried to pick up her vital signs, but without her envirosuit on, he was getting nothing.

“We’re going to need you for more than your aim.”

Garrus leaned away from the display. “Oh, I’m ready for it, but I’m pretty sure we’ll still need giant guns, and lots of them.” He’d seen how quickly the Reapers ripped through the turian fleet. The Normandy was going to need a lot more to be ready.

Shepard titled her head. “I can’t argue with that.”

Spirits, she was standing there right in front of him. It was killing him to not know where he stood with her anymore. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, so…is this the part where we…shake hands?” He looked up at her. “I wasn’t sure about the protocol on reunions, or if you even still felt that way about me.”

 

There. He said it. It was up to her. He could take a no, he decided. He would just have to be a lot more comfortable sleeping in the gun battery.

She was smirking. “The scars are starting to face. I remember they drove you wild.” He paused to listen to her laugh, a sound he didn’t realized he’d missed until just then. “But I can go out and get all new ones if it’ll help.”

She looked up at him, almost…was she being shy? “I haven’t forgotten our time together.”

Garrus took a step closer to her. “Well, I’ve been doing some more research on human customs. I didn’t want to…”

Shepard cut him off by kissing him directly on the fading scars. When she pulled away, she said, “that’s the protocol on reunions.”


End file.
